* Spotted driving in: coming up Wilson, came upon a school bus stopped, sitting there. So I stopped (at the top of the hill, and dearly hoped if anyone came roaring up behind me - people drive too fast on that street for the level of visibility there - they'd see me in time). It sat there quite a while and finally a kid got OFF. Now, understand, this is 7 am: kids should be getting ON buses.
I think the simplest explanation was it was someone who still didn't have the "bus thing" down 100% and he got on the wrong bus (he looked like maybe a 5th grader, though). Alternate explanation: he did some unforgiveable thing right after getting on and the bus driver threw him back off.
I dunno. I hated riding the bus as a kid because of the level of meanness of the other kids and it often seemed like the drivers did *nothing*.
* Bell choir is moving to Monday nights. One of our members is involved with the college-student ministry (and it's the only man in the group, and the youngest regular member, so he is the one who plays the heaviest bells). I'm fine with that; Monday is actually a less-exhausting day than Tuesday and last night I could tell I made more mistakes because I was tired.
* We've also had the bell choir director's daughter (and sometimes son-in-law, and sometimes maybe-10-year-old (? I am not always great at guessing ages) daughter playing along or filling in for absent people. They recently moved back to the area and have been attending church and I hope they join - the kids (there's also a maybe-6-year-old boy) are sweet and it would be nice to have another young family.
Last week, when I had had a really bad day and it kind of showed, the girl came up to me after practice and offered to hug me, which made things a little better.
* I'm still frustrated with "out there humanity" (the stuff you hear about in the news) but a couple things about the first week here made me happier:
- My research student from summer 2017 was back - this is the person I authored a paper with.
Anyway, I saw her, and said "You're back!!!" with maybe a little over-excitement, but (a) she had said last spring, sadly, she didn't know if she'd be back in the fall to complete her degree and (b) she really is one of the best and most enthusiastic students I've had.
And she said, yes, the summer internship she had "gave (her) what (she) needed" to come back. I don't know if she meant funds or encouragement or both, but it's a good thing to have her back and it makes me happy to think she'll complete her degree.
- Also, in one of my classes, a new-to-me student (I don't know if he's a new transfer or just someone I haven't had in class before) remarked, at the end of the first day, "This sounds like it's going to be a fun class!" (and yes, sadly, I had to do the Lisa Simpson sarcasm-scan in my mind: none detected, so a genuine compliment). I hope he continues to find it fun.
(In case you don't have the stupid memory filing system I do, that brings up random stuff:)
And yeah. Too many years growing up as an unpopular kid have taught me to scan every kind-sounding thing for sarcastic content first.
* That may actually be why some people have a hard time accepting compliments, now I think of it: a lot of us spent our childhoods hearing that backhanded stuff and it trained us to distrust.
* Speaking of training (and yeah, my memory is doing its stupid ADHD pingpong thing this morning), I've periodically thought of this poem thing of late. ("Children Learn what they Live," and people of a certain age may remember it; it's VERY 1970s. Even though it was apparently written in the 1950s).
I first remember seeing it up at the children's dentist my brother and I went to. I never thought that much about it then, and as a young adult I think I remembered it as typical 1970s glurge.
But yeah:
"If a child lives with ridicule, he learns to be shy"
"If a child lives with criticism, he learns to condemn"
I do wonder how much of personality is "nature" (genetics, there do seem to be some genetic linkages to "personality," at least in non-human animals - see the experiment on domesticating foxes done in Soviet Russia) and how much is "nurture" (experience)
I mean, I was probably hardwired to be an introvert to begin with, but early exposure to how other kids treated me may have made me even more wary about interacting with people I didn't already know well. (It takes me a long time to feel comfortable with people, and even then, showing any kind of strong emotion is "bad" to me - I still feel bad about getting upset and having to walk out of faculty meeting last week)
* I need to get back to knitting again. I haven't done much these past few days. I did bring over the current simple sock because I am reading yet another book ("Forcing the Spring") on the history of the environmental movement, and it's drier than "This Green and Growing Land" so I'm having to kind of force myself to read it (It's also an interlibrary loan book that has to go back early in September, so I have to get through it - I'm on page 170 of about 430.)
I want to finish the Augusta cardigan but I admit I also want to start something new, like Incunabala from "This Thing of Paper" - I have the yarn for it (I have decided that if I can make gauge, I am using the dk weight labeled (it seems thinner, though) Remix I bought over the summer.
Part of the problem is I'm back to my semester schedule of getting up sometime between 4:30 and 5 am to get in a workout, which means on the other end I need to be in bed by 9 pm or the next day is not going to be a good day. So it's hard to pencil in a life in and around work and other things :(
* Man, if I could just hire someone to read to me while I knit on more complex things, I'd have it made. (Yes, Audible, I know, but the reading I "must" do tends not to be things Audible offers).
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